


lovesick

by hydrospanners



Series: renegade [21]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Docember 2018, Established Relationship, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-12 07:28:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16868692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrospanners/pseuds/hydrospanners
Summary: The only thing worse than falling in love is falling alone. Doc & Rea tiptoe around a conversation about their feelings.





	lovesick

It’s his racing heart that finally wakes her, pounding like a drum beneath her ear. Rea squints at the chrono--a little after 0500 now--and yawns. She can feel the frayed edges of his anxiety tugging at the back of her mind, making themselves at home in her body.

 

“Thought you were sleeping,” Archiban says, his voice too soft and too steady for a man flirting with cardiac arrest. (She’s always saying how he’ll flirt with anything, isn’t she?)

 

“‘m trying,” Rea slurs her words around another yawn, still too drunk with sleep for talking. “You think too loud.”

 

He huffs a little laugh, brushing his fingers along her spine. The touch isn’t erotic, but leaves her shivering all the same. She can’t help reaching out, tracing a path up his chest, her hand following the line of his neck to the hard, stubbled edge of his jaw, clenched with whatever worry is drowning him in its current. She runs her thumb along the taut muscle of his cheek, the one she’s always fascinated by but can never remember the name of.

 

She says, “I thought we worked all this tension out already. You need to go another round?”

 

A slow smile spreads across his lips, tickling her knuckles with his moustache. “Much as I’d like to, Gorgeous, not all of us have a Jedi’s stamina.”

 

“Sometimes it’s nice just to go for a ride, even if you don’t reach your destination.” 

 

Sprawled on top of him like she is, it’s easy to draw her leg up his body, to rub her thigh across the soft, velvety length of him. It’s a testament to how hard she’d worked him earlier that he doesn’t so much as twitch at the contact.

 

Archiban huffs another laugh above her, turning to press feathery kisses against her knuckles. “Very generous of you, Beautiful.”

 

“Generous is my middle name,” she says, hitching her knee over his hip. She loves the feel of him beneath her, his soft skin and sleek muscle, the downy hair trailing along his abdomen. The sharp jut of his hip against her center.

 

(Something tells her this isn’t the time for getting worked up, but a woman only has so much willpower.)

 

“I--” he starts, then swallows back his words, his the apple of his throat bobbing against her forearm. She can hear the stutter of his heartbeat beneath her ear, can feel the bloom of a flush on his cheeks. “It’s nothing, Rea. Go back to sleep.”

 

“Banthashit,” she says, turning to prop her chin on his chest so she can look him in the eyes. They’re very full of something she can’t quite place. “If I’m not allowed to lie to you, you don’t get to lie to me, Kimble.”

 

Archiban sighs, wrapping his hand around the fingers stroking his jaw. He presses a kiss to her palm before resting his cheek against it. “You can sense it, can’t you? When I lie?”

 

She doesn’t point out that she doesn’t need extra senses to know banthashit when she sees it; he already knows that. “The Force has its drawbacks.”

 

“It’s not a drawback,” he says, immediately and with a conviction that surprises her. As much as he enjoyed her tricks before--Well, things are different now. He’s seen just how far past mind-blowing sex her tricks can go.

 

She hopes that isn’t what’s keeping him up. Memories. Nightmares.  _ Her _ .

 

“You remember that nutjob on Belsavis?” He asks.

 

Rea swallows back the lump of fear forming in her throat and nods. “Been trying not to.”

 

Archiban laughs. It’s a strangled, nervous sort of laugh that sends her heart racing, and not in a good way. Because she’s never seen him like this before. Never seen him wearing his fear right there on his face, on his whole body. She worries what it might mean. 

 

(Worries what it might mean for  _ them _ , if there’s such a thing as a ‘them’. Worries what it might mean for her.)

 

(She’s always been a selfish creature at heart.)

 

Rea hides her anxiety better than he does, holding her breath steady and her expression carefully blank. Not that it matters. Now that they’re approaching the source of all this late night (early morning?) disquiet, his eyes are dancing around the darkness of the room, looking at anything but her.

 

“You could sense it, couldn’t you? That he was crazy?”

 

“Anyone with eyes could see he was a few servos short of an astromech,” she says. There’d been something feral about his smiles, something manic in the tight, controlled way he moved. As was usually the case, she hadn’t needed the Force to see something was off. Just like she doesn’t need it now.

 

“But you don’t need to see it, do you?” Archiban presses her, his eyes finally flitting back to her face. They bore into her, so serious it almost hurts. “You can tell if someone’s crazy with the Force. Like, if--If something was wrong with me. You’d know?”

 

Because she’s a terrible fucking person, Rea puffs out a sigh of relief. Right in his face. 

 

The man she’s only recently realized she’s in love with is lying awake at night, having some kind of anxiety attack about his own sanity, and she’s the kind of selfish asshole who feels _ relieved _ . Relieved that it isn’t her fault; relieved that she isn’t going to lose him. Because obviously her own heart is the one that matters right now.

 

Fuck.

 

She swallows back the lump of emotion in her throat and presses a kiss to Archiban’s chest, right over his heart. “I’d know,” Rea promises, her voice steady and sure. She runs her thumb along his lower lip, holding his gaze as she marvels at his softness. How does a man who lives like he does manage to be so soft? To shine like he does? What did she ever do to make a man like him look at her with tenderness? “There’s nothing wrong with you, Archiban. Outside your taste in women, I promise you’re completely sane.”

 

There’s that something in his eyes again before he looks away, laughing that clipped, breathless laugh. “Well I don’t  _ feel _ sane,” he says. 

 

Rea can’t think what else to say, can’t think what might be reassuring, so she falls back on the only thing she really knows. “That’s what happens when you spend too much time with my brother.”

 

He laughs again, fuller and realer this time, but it doesn’t last. His smile fades and the silence falls over them like a blanket. His eyes turn back to her, studying her with a new kind of unreadable expression as he massages her hand with his thumb, rubbing contemplative little circles into her palm and wrist. The quiet grows thick, heavy with all the words they aren’t saying. With something real and serious, drifting formless between them.

 

She’s so damn tired of real and serious. So damn tired of talking. And yet--And yet this is  _ Archiban _ . If real and serious is what he wants… Well, it’s not like she doesn’t know she’ll give him anything he asks. She’ll claw her still-beating heart out of her own chest if it’ll make him happy.

 

(From the way he’s looking at her, she wonders if it might. Wonders if she should try it just in case.)

 

“Rea,” he breathes her name when the silence starts to grow too heavy. Chews on that soft lip of his, tightens his hold on her hand. He stares deep into her eyes, like he’s searching for something, and she can’t tell if he finds it or not. “I, uh,” he swallows again, his voice soft and a little shaky as he goes on, “I don’t think it’s your brother making me crazy.”

 

_ Oh _ . She fights back a frown, trying to think--

 

“There’s this woman.”

 

_ Oh!  _ Rea’s heart skips a beat, terrified and elated. Swelling with hope. Plummeting with dread. She’s sure every hair on her body is standing on end, anticipating.

 

“You’ve probably seen her around. She’s the tall one with the killer body, never takes anyone’s shit.” He presses another kiss to her palm and smiles, all tenderness and warmth. It sucks the air from her lungs and she revels in it, in this gentleness he’s always hiding away. Revels in the joy of being allowed to see it, of being trusted with it. Revels in the way he’s looking at her. ”I can’t seem to stop thinking about her.”

 

“That must be pretty distracting,” she whispers. 

 

“Among other things,” he agrees, running a hand up her back, letting his fingers tangle in her hair. “But it’s worth it. I think I’d give her a lot more than my sanity if she wanted it.”

 

“She must be quite a woman,” Rea says, her smile growing. “You should introduce me.”

 

Archiban laughs, his real laugh that she loves probably too much. “Ouch, Beautiful.”

 

“You had it coming.” She teasingly swats at him with the hand he isn’t holding in a vice.

 

“C’mon, Gorgeous. You know better. When was the last time I even looked at anyone else?”

 

Rea rolls her eyes in the fondest, most affectionate way a person can. “Pot, meet kettle. Is that really what you’ve been so worked up about?”

 

This isn’t the first sleepless night they’ve had. Not the first time she’s worked the tension out of him until he had nothing left to work. She didn’t think much of it before. After the last couple of months, she can’t blame him for a little stress. Stars know she isn’t the easiest woman in the galaxy to be involved with.

 

“Maybe,” Archiban says, toying with a lock of her hair. And when he catches her gaze, he holds onto it like a lifeline. “If I’m going crazy, I don’t want to be going alone.”

 

To be so smart, he can be frustratingly stupid sometimes.

 

Has she not been embarrassingly obvious about her feelings? She’s always staring at him, always touching him, always reaching out for him with every sense she has. She hasn’t looked at anyone else since that night after Balmorra. She can’t think a single starsdamned thought without wanting to hear his opinion on it. Can’t help wanting to hear all his opinions, every thought he has about everything. 

 

He can’t possibly walk around believing a woman like her really gives a fuck about the Journal of Xenomedicine or the idiots at the Republic Health Administration. He can’t possibly think she listens to hours of his rants out of passion for the field.

 

Rea feels the sharp tug of disappointment, senses the echo of a deep, aching something she isn’t ready to look at too closely, and realizes with a start that she hasn’t said a word. He’s watching her with all this hope, all this expectation, and she’s just staring back, her mouth gaping like a fish.

 

She’s the fucking worst.

 

She snaps her mouth shut and pushes her free hand into the pillow behind his head, leveraging herself up until she’s hovering directly over him, nose to nose. She lets herself tumble ass over tea kettle into depths of his gaze, into the open way he’s looking at her, into the way he’s laying himself bare for her. And even though he won’t know, even though he can’t possibly feel it, she lays herself bare for him. Strips every defense she has, lowers every shield. Lets every piece of her flow into the Force and swirl around them like storm.

 

She can’t remember the last time she was this exposed. She’s not sure she ever has been.

 

Maybe it’s something in her expression, something in her body language. Maybe he’s not as blind to the currents of the Force as she thinks. But Archiban seems to realize something has changed as he smiles up at her, and he lights up like a fucking star. She doesn’t know if he’s really glowing or if it’s her senses playing tricks on her, but he looks radiant to her eyes.

 

“Archiban,” she says his name in a voice that’s low and steady, delighting in the way he shivers as her breath brushes across his parted lips. “You have more clothes in my wardrobe than me. My fresher is full of your lotions and your creams and your gels. You picked out my bedding  _ and _ my shampoo. Everything I own smells like your cologne.” She smiles broadly, pressing her forehead to his. “I think it’s safe to say you aren’t the only one going crazy.”

 

“I—“ he starts, only for the words to catch in his throat. She doesn’t look away, isn’t sure if she even blinks, as they smile at each other like a couple of fucking morons. Like the luckiest fucking morons in the galaxy.

 

Archiban’s voice is thick like syrup when he finally remembers how to use it. “Ordinarily,” he murmurs, “I’d kiss you for that kind of talk. But I, uh—I want to do this right, Rea.”

 

She decides very quickly that if being right does not involve kissing him, wrong is what she wants to be.

 

Rea slants her mouth over his and  _ savors _ . She takes her time; she breathes him in. She kisses him like they have all the time in the world to feel and explore. She kisses him until she’s sure every part of him is glowing with the heat of her love. Until there’s no doubt about how she feels.

 

When it’s done, she pulls back only a little, her lips still hovering over his, their breath still swirling together between them. “Does this not feel right to you?” She asks.

 

Her only answer is another kiss.

  
  



End file.
